2010: O’Brien: Is new Twitter CEO right person for the big job ahead?

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FILE - In this April 13, 2010 file photo, Dick Costolo, then chief operating officer at Twitter, speaks during his keynote presentation at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York. Costolo, an early investor who was hired as chief operating officer a year ago, was named CEO Monday, Oct. 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

In this April 13, 2010 file photo, Dick Costolo, then chief operating officer at Twitter, speaks during his keynote presentation at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York. Costolo, an early investor who was hired as chief operating officer a year ago, was named CEO Monday, Oct. 4, 2010.

If you want to understand the challenges Twitter’s new CEO will face, consider that shortly after Dick Costolo’s promotion was announced Monday the microblogging site received so much traffic it once again suffered the kind of outage that has plagued it since its launch four years ago.

Is Costolo the right person to solve this and other big hurdles facing Twitter? His appointment was hardly surprising to Silicon Valley insiders who follow the San Francisco-based company, and he’s widely respected and liked by the geek elite. But there are several things about Costolo that give me reservations about his ability to run a company now valued at more than $1 billion by its investors.

Costolo succeeds co-founder Ev Williams, who held the CEO job for two years. During Williams’ tenure, Twitter grew from 20 employees to 300. The site saw registered users leap from 3 million to 160 million, while the number of tweets exploded from 1.25 million a day to 90 million. That’s an astonishing record of success, perhaps eclipsed only by the run Facebook has had.

But back in the spring, after Twitter held its first developers conference, I wondered whether Williams was the right person to guide the company through its next phase of growth. This was nothing personal against Williams. It’s just that Twitter had clearly reached the classic crossroads any successful Silicon Valley startup faces: Is the person who founded the company still the right one to run it when it matures from cuddly little startup into a serious business?

There are several different ways startups navigate this difficult transition. In the case of Google, the co-founders brought in Eric Schmidt, a seasoned executive who had experience running large organizations. At Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg brought in Google executive Sheryl Sandberg to be chief operating officer.

In both cases, these older executives had organizational skills that complemented the entrepreneurial experiences of the founder. To some in the valley, such moves sound like a condescending need to “bring in the adults” after the kids have had fun with their startup dreams. But I think the skills needed to create an innovative startup and inspire a small cadre of believers to bleed for the cause are not the same ones required to manage hundreds if not thousands of employees and to nurture a robust business model.

What’s striking about Costolo — compared with the people brought in at Facebook and Google — is how similar his background is to Williams’ résumé. Costolo has started three companies, including FeedBurner, which he sold to Google for $100 million in 2007. Williams also started three companies, including Blogger, which he sold to Google for an undisclosed sum in 2003.

Costolo left Google and joined Twitter as chief operating officer a year ago. While many reports have noted that this will be Costolo’s third time as a CEO, Twitter, with its 300 employees, is already the largest company he has run. And there won’t be a lot of time for him to grow into the gig. He’s got to immediately tackle the same list of challenges that had me wondering about Williams’ leadership ability earlier this year.

First and foremost, the service has to solve its downtime issues. At the same time, the company is still hiring like mad. When that many new faces are pouring in the door, it’s not easy to maintain Twitter’s tight-knit culture and avoid plunging the company into organizational chaos.

There’s also the question of Twitter’s identity. It took a step toward making the service easier for average folks to use with the redesign of its main website a few weeks ago. That said, Twitter remains a mystery for many average folks. Many nonusers still have a hard time understanding what Twitter is, let alone why they should use it.

Last, but not least, is the pesky business model problem. The new website looks like it will make Twitter more advertising-friendly. But it remains to be seen whether the company can turn the revenue spigot on fast enough to pay for all the infrastructure investments it needs and to pay for all those new bodies coming in the door.

Is Costolo the right person for this job? Time to address these challenges is running short. The answer may determine whether Twitter can thrive as an independent company or be forced to seek the shelter of being bought by a larger company.